The Skinniest Shoppers Buy the Priciest Food

Yesterday we showed you a very interesting infographic of money spent on food, broken down by city. Now here is another wrinkle in the story of how people spend their money at the grocery store.

A small study recently done in Seattle says that, in Seattle, a city with an obesity rate of 20%, only 4% of the people who shopped at Whole Foods were obese. At a lower-priced grocery store, on the other hand, the average obesity rate of its shoppers was 40%.

What does this reveal about eating habits and the economic conditions of Americans?

The article that we read discussing this study is very interesting. It speculates on the economic factors involved in obesity, and it also states, interestingly, that this implies that availability of healthy food isn’t the main factor. Both stores had healthy food, but the presumably wealthier customers at Whole Foods were still much skinnier.